Page 85 of Make No Mistake

I worked hard to remain calm despite the daggers being shot my direction. “Detective Larson thinks I might be able to lure him out and …”

“No.”

Suddenly I had two people in the room ready to attack.

“Aubrey, he can’t get away with this. If we don’t do …”

“No. Mckayla, you can’t risk yourself. Let the police do their job.”

“Yeah? Like they did back in high school?”

I could feel the air being sucked out of the room. I’d gone too far, but I needed to prove my point. Sometimes we needed to take things into our own hands.

“You’re right, Mac. They didn’t do a very good job back then, but I never sought Tucker out.”

“If you could have stopped him sooner, would you?”

She narrowed her eyes to near slits.

“Not if it put me in danger.”

I threw up my arms and sighed. “It’s not like I’m walking through campus in the middle of the night alone! The police will be with me.”

Aubrey shook her head. “You don’t get it, Mac. I can’t watch you do this. I can’t sit back and let you put yourself in danger. It’s like you’re mocking how serious this is. You’re mocking everything I went through.”

I gasped. “Aubrey. No.”

She held up a hand. “If I can’t convince you out of this, then I’m leaving. I won’t watch this happen.”

Before I could say another word, she was gone. She stomped up the stairs and slammed the door.

My eyes drifted back to Jay, but he wasn’t going to offer any comfort.

“Please don’t do this.”

I fell against the counter as all fight left me. “I’m not deciding anything yet.”

Jay shook his head. “Thai or pizza?”

Relief filled me. He was letting it go. For now.

A screechingring pierced through my sleep, shocking me awake. Bed. I was in bed. But not my room. I closed my eyes and tried to focus.

I was at Jay’s house. In his guest room. So what was the sound?

Before I could throw my blankets off, the door swung open revealing Jay in just sweat pants. I wanted to enjoy the view, but the sound was too distracting.

“You okay?”

I nodded and threw my legs off the side of the bed and stood. He was gone by the time I made it to the door. All of the lights in the house were off, so I guessed he’d gone downstairs. Thoughts were hard to form with the obnoxious screaming.

The alarm? It couldn’t be that again, right?

By the time I finally made it downstairs, Jay was standing in front of the alarm screen with its three inch face the only source of light.

I flipped on the living room light and leaned over Jay’s shoulder to read the screen. It said the same thing as the day before. How?

The officers had checked every window and door, and none of them showed signs of forced entry.